What is International Women’s Day and How Can the Pageant Industry Help
What is International Women’s day?
International Women's Day (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. But one thing is for sure, International Women's Day has been occurring for well over a century - and continues to grow from strength to strength.
Gloria Steinem, world-renowned feminist, journalist and activist once explained "The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights." So, make International Women's Day your day and do what you can to truly make a positive difference for women.
What does that mean for pageants?
OK, so I don’t know about you but I have had many occasions where somebody tells me how outdated pageants are, how they are demeaning for women and its just about judging women in bathing suits. I’m actually getting a bit tired of having to explain what pageantry is all about but for me, International Womens Day represents three things at this moment in time;
Gender Equality in the workplace & at home (especially eliminating any form of abuse),
Our voices being heard and not ignored
Freedom to achieve our dreams.
This freedom could be in the form of young women overseas who just want the right to have an education, a female in the technology industry who wants to be the CEO to us being able to compete in pageants without being looked down on or preached at.
International women’s day is about promoting women being able to be themselves and not being told that they are being too emotional or that they are the wrong size. The reason why I love the pageant industry so much is because it does promote women being themselves and encourages women to succeed in all of their ambitions, therefore the industry encompasses exactly what International Women’s Day is trying to achieve (I wish more people outside of the industry could see this)
How Far Have We Come?
It took almost 100 years of campaigning and marching for women to get the right to vote. It’s been around 100 more years and we’ve come a lot further forward but we’re still not at a point where we have complete equality, women are still being abused in the workplace and at home and there are still ceilings in some industries holding women back. Back then, it took hard work, years of campaigning and men and women coming together to make a difference.
You will have seen similar things happening more recently in the public eye such as the #MeToo campaign, strong women in the public eye coming forward against tyrants and men who thought it was OK to take advantage of their authority and abuse these women. It frustrates me when people ask why they didn’t do anything sooner, if you’ve ever been in that position before you will know why.
Sometimes people have come forward and they’ve been told to be quiet or worse, it’s damaged or ruined their career just because they spoke out. I’m really pleased to live in the time we do now because our voices are being heard and the #MeToo campaign just shows what can happen when Men and Women stand together for justice and for what’s right.
